“Yes, and crawled here. Water!”
Fred administered more, every drop seeming delicious to the fevered lips of the wounded man.
Just then Fred remembered that he had a little bread in the wallet at his side; and breaking it up, he soaked a small piece in the water, and placed it between poor Nat’s lips.
This was eaten, and a few more scraps, the refreshment seeming to revive the sufferer wonderfully, and he looked up now in Fred’s eyes, as he whispered faintly—
“I was dying of thirst. I hid here—after the fight—and used to crawl at night to my old garden for food. Then I grew too weak. Master Fred, it would have been all over, if you had not come.”
“Thank Heaven! I heard you,” said Fred, giving the poor fellow a few more scraps of the moistened bread till he signed to him to cease, and then he looked up in his benefactor’s face with a faint smile on his parched and cracked lips.
“Oughtn’t you to kill me, Master Fred?” he whispered.
“Oh, Nat, don’t talk like that, my lad! I can’t forget the past.”
“Nor can I, Master Fred. But tell me, lad, Master Scarlett? Don’t say he’s dead.”
“No, no; I believe he’s alive and well,” cried Fred, eagerly. And he saw the poor fellow close his eyes and lie back, with his lips moving as if he were in prayer.